EIR Daily Alert Service, MONDAY, March 16, 2020
MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2020
Volume 7, Number 53
EIR Daily Alert Service
P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390
- Western World Shutting Down, But Necessary New Paradigm Eludes Leaders
- Governor Cuomo Calls on Trump to Deploy Army Corps of Engineers to Fight COVID-19
- China Slams U.K. Delusion About Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ as ‘Extremely Irresponsible’
- German Doctors’ Association Head Insists ‘Jusr-in-Time Healthcare’ Cannot Provide Care
- Trump, Pence Press Conference on More Disease Measures, Praise Bipartisan Action on House Bill
- Chinese Scientists Hold Videoconference With 17 Central and Eastern European Countries on Coronavirus
- British Empire Idealogue Praises Coronavirus for ‘Culling the Herd’ of Senior Citizens
- Sweden’s Lack of Active Countermeasures Against COVID-19 in Becomes an International Scandal
- Second Attack on Camp Taji in Iraq; Baghdad Warns U.S. Not to Repond, But to Get Out
- Another OPCW Whistleblower Denounces Treatment and Lies About Other Whistleblowers
- Defender-Europe Exercise Still on Despite Coronavirus
- Helga Zepp-LaRouche Argues for Canceling NATO’s ‘Defender-Europe 2020’ Military Exercise
- Fed Walks Off the Plank
EDITORIAL
Western World Shutting Down, but Necessary New Paradigm Eludes Leaders
March 15 (EIRNS)—With Europe now officially the epicenter of the expanding coronavirus pandemic, most Western nations—with some notable exceptions—are taking drastic actions. France, Spain and Israel, like Italy, have ordered the closing of all non-essential stores, and for the entire population to stay at home other than for work or medical visits, or for necessary shopping for food and medical supplies. The peripatetic Dr. Fauci, perhaps the most trusted adviser to President Donald Trump on these matters, appeared on all five major Sunday talk shows today, saying that a similar shutdown across the U.S. may be necessary.
Yet, the necessary revolutionary transformation required to reverse not only the spread of the pandemic, but, more importantly, the fifty-year-long self-destruction of the productive capacities of the Western nations—which is the root cause of the crisis—has eluded our political leaders.
There are hints in that direction. President Trump brought CEOs from the private sector together to address certain urgent needs under government direction, and has used the Defense Production Act from 1950 to impose production requirements of certain medical equipment companies. French President Emmanuel Macron on March 12 said: “We will have to draw the lessons in the future regarding the model of development our world has become involved with over decades, and which today has revealed its great failures.” He said a public health system “is not a cost, but a precious good, which is indispensable when destiny strikes.” He correctly generalizes that point: “There are goods and services which must be put outside the laws of the marketplace.”
Indeed, this captures the crucial difference between the British System and the American System. Alexander Hamilton created the American System based on the revolutionary premise that a sovereign government must be responsible for assuring the “general welfare” of the population, not by owning the means of production, but by assuring that the people and the entrepreneurs have access to water, power, transportation, education and health care. The 1946 Hill-Burton policy was a classic example of such an American System approach, setting a required standard for the number of beds and trained health professionals per capita in every district of the nation, be they public or private facilities. When this was taken down in the 1970s, while the Glass-Steagall bank separation and fixed-exchange-rate policy was also taken down, the U.S. was rapidly taken over by British “free market” policies which put short-term corporate profit—“stockholder value”—ahead of standards of labor productivity and standards of living. The world is now paying the price, with pandemics, locusts, and financial panic.
Consider that the urgent effort to counter the locust plague now ravaging wide regions of Africa and Asia, threatening millions of lives, has been unable to raise the mere $138 million needed to eradicate the deadly threat, while the U.S. Federal Reserve pumps hundreds of billions of dollars into the bankrupt Western banking system every week, and is now preparing $1.5 trillion in QE! Not only does this express a quality of fascist callousness toward the human race, it is economic insanity. Restoring Glass-Steagall, establishing an American System credit structure, and unleashing the creative capacities of the world’s scientific community to address the health crisis, the necessity of nuclear and fusion power development, and a crash space program—these are not nice ideas, they are the only path for the human race to stop the descent into a new Dark Age, and to be able to bring about a New Paradigm, a new global Renaissance. This is the core of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s recent call for the leaders of Russia, China, India and the U.S., and others who will agree, to meet, urgently, to address the pandemic, the war danger, and the collapsing global financial system, with a New Bretton Woods agreement to end the British System of speculative insanity.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Governor Cuomo Calls on Trump To Deploy Army Corps of Engineers To Fight COVID-19
March 15 (EIRNS)—In an op-ed in the New York Times and a press conference today, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on President Donald Trump to “Mobilize the Military To Help Fight Coronavirus.”
“The time is growing short and fewer options are available. Using federal troops to help create hospital beds is one we should try,” Cuomo writes in the op-ed. “State and local governments alone simply do not have the capacity or resources to do what is necessary, and we don’t want a patchwork quilt of policies.”
Cuomo praised Trump’s efforts to expand testing by bypassing restrictions on Roach and others, but says he must do more in that direction, and: “don’t let bureaucracy get in the way of fighting this virus. Break the logjam, let states fully take over testing so they can unleash hundreds of labs tomorrow and bring testing to scale.”
He also calls for a “uniform federal standard for when cities and states should shut down commerce and schools, or cancel events,” rather than each state making such decisions.
But most important is his warning that “without immediate action, the imminent failure of hospital systems is all but certain. According to one projection, as many as 214 million people in our country could be infected over the course of the epidemic. Of those, as many as 21 million people could require hospitalization. This would crush the nation’s medical system. New York State has just 53,470 hospital beds, only 3,186 of which are intensive-care beds. Our country as a whole has fewer than 1 million staffed hospital beds, fewer proportionately than China, South Korea or Italy.
“Ask your experts, how many intensive-care beds do we need for our vulnerable populations, and how many do we have now? The scarcity portends a greater failing and a worse situation than what we are seeing in Italy, where lives are being lost because the country doesn’t have the health care capacity.
“States cannot build more hospitals, acquire ventilators or modify facilities quickly enough. At this point, our best hope is to utilize the Army Corps of Engineers to leverage its expertise, equipment and people power to retrofit and equip existing facilities—like military bases or college dormitories—to serve as temporary medical centers. Then we can designate existing hospital beds for the acutely ill.”
He notes that the deployment of active duty Army Corps of Engineer (ACE) personnel “would not violate federal law because this is a national disaster.”
In his press conference, Cuomo said, “there is only one workforce—the Army Corps and its military assets—who can do this. They have the equipment, the manpower, the resources. The Army Corps of Engineers is amazing—I’ve worked with them.”
He continued: “China built dozens of hospitals in literally a month. How? The federal government came in and said, ‘We’re going to do it.’ Same thing in South Korea. The states cannot do it.”
The Governor concluded, addressing President Trump: “I make these suggestions not as a Democrat but as one of the nation’s most senior governors and a former cabinet secretary who knows the capacity of the federal government. We have had disagreements about your actions against New York, which we can pursue at another time. Today, let’s work together as Americans. Time is short.”
COVID-19
China Slams U.K. Delusion about Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ as ‘Extremely Irresponsible’
March 15 (EIRNS)—The Chinese response, as expressed in the Global Times, to the U.K.’s Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, who said the U.K. should allow two-thirds of the population to be infected by the novel coronavirus in order for the population to build up a “herd immunity,” is one of disgust. A Global Times article today said this policy “has sparked outrage not only in Britain but also in China, as the latter paid a heavy price to bring the epidemic under control. Such a laissez-faire mindset and lax measures are considered extremely irresponsible and risk causing a rebound in China due to the growing number of imported infections, prompting some to call for a ban on flights from countries like the U.K. and stricter customs entry measures to be adopted.”
The authors Chen Qingqing and Leng Shumei quote Seema Yasmin, a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University, who said in a tweet that letting the virus spread to 60% of the population in the U.K. actually means “39.6 million infected, 2 million critically ill and 277,000 deaths.”
German Doctors’ Association Head Insists ‘Just-In-Time Healthcare’ Cannot Provide Care
March 14 (EIRNS)—Dr. Susanne Johna, who chairs Germany’s medical association, Marburger Bund, criticized the budget-cutting approach to healthcare delivery: “Just-in-time service does not work in healthcare. After all, fire brigades are not paid according to the number of fires and purchase firetrucks after the fires have broken out, but we need them and pay for them in advance.” She said that a sufficient supply of hospital beds is necessary to enable the special clinics to do their job.
A Deutsche Bank Research survey comes to the conclusion that if the present dynamic of COVID-19 pandemic continues, Germany will have no more free ICU beds by May 14. Of the 28,000 ICU beds that German hospitals have now, 78% are already occupied by patients who do not have novel coronavirus. It is high time for a crash program to make more beds and the trained care staff available.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s public health institute, does not rule out that the country might run into bottlenecks in intensive care sooner or later. The RKI has only now begun to get a precise overview of what the situation is at individual hospitals, to find out, should a particular hospital run out of beds, how capacity at other hospitals must be used. RKI President Dr. Lothar Wieler indicated that efforts be made to at least increase the number of respiratory ventilators.
Trump, Pence Press Conference on More Disease Measures, Praise Bipartisan Action on House Bill
March 14 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, accompanied by other officials, appeared before the cameras again today, following a meeting of the coronavirus task force, to announce, among other things, an agreement with both the Congress and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries on the provision of free testing for the coronavirus for anyone who needs it.
Trump also reported that legislative package now working its way through Congress—it was passed by the House of Representatives on March 13—also includes paid sick and family medical leave and aid to caregivers of elderly relatives and families with children affected by school closures. President Trump also emphasized in a tweet that there had been bipartisan cooperation to move the legislation through quickly: “Good teamwork between Republicans & Democrats as the House passes the big CoronaVirus Relief Bill. People really pulled together. Nice to see!”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, reported that as of yesterday afternoon there were 2,226 cases in the U.S. and 50 deaths, including 532 new cases and 9 deaths yesterday. He particularly noted the situation in China, where there were only 11 new cases, yesterday and 7 deaths. Fauci stressed that he wants to accomplish in the U.S. what the Chinese did, but with a lower peak. He stressed that on the testing “all systems are go” because of President Trump’s emergency declaration and that, as we gain knowledge of testing, this will alleviate anxiety because then we’ll know where we stand.
Chinese Scientists Hold Videoconference with 17 Central and Eastern European Countries on Coronavirus
March 14 (EIRNS)—Chinese scientists held a videoconference March 13 with health officials from the 17 Central and East European countries (CEEC) to share information on coronavirus, including updates on how the fight against the pandemic is being carried out in China, reported Greece’s National Herald today.
The key to managing COVID-19 is a strong political commitment, China’s National Health Commission representative Z. Yang told the CEEC countries.
Chinese Embassy representatives in Athens said they had been in touch with Greek authorities before the first official cases were confirmed in Greece, which could explain some of the proactive measures the Greek government has taken.
British Empire Ideologue Praises Coronavirus for ‘Culling the Herd’ of Senior Citizens
March 14 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche was considered extreme by many, when he repeatedly insisted that “today’s imperial oligarchs, they prefer to treat people like cattle, culling the herd when required.”
But LaRouche was right: The ideologues of the British Empire, Malthusians that they are, never met a deadly virus that they didn’t like. Take the case of Prince Philip who famously stated back in 1988: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
Earlier this month, on March 3, it was Jeremy Warner’s turn to raise the flag of Nazi Malthusianism. Warner is the assistant editor and financial columnist for the Daily Telegraph, which describes him as “one of Britain’s leading business and economics commentators” and “a serial winner of awards.” Warner wrote on March 3: “Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”
Sweden’s Lack of Active Countermeasures against COVID-19 in Becomes an International Scandal
March 14 (EIRNS)—Warnings from Italy and domestic independent experts are ignored, with arguments that led to a sharp reaction from the Italian Ambassador to Sweden. The Swedish system with independent authorities wielding the executive power instead of the government, and a health system which is decentralized and victimized by neo-liberal austerity, has created a situation where the measures are not coordinated and threaten that Sweden will become the new epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. In a recent development, Denmark closed its border to Sweden at noon on March 14 to prevent the spread of contagion. The same day also China’s Global Times ran an editorial criticizing Sweden for “giving up” in response to the virus and becoming “a black hole” where the virus can grow.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Second Attack on Camp Taji in Iraq; Baghdad Warns U.S. Not To Respond, but To Get Out
March 15 (EIRNS)—A second rocket attack on the Taji U.S.-Iraq military base in Iraq has injured three U.S. troops, two seriously, and several Iraqi troops. The daytime raid saw 33 107mm rockets launched from within a walled in facility, with the bricks taken down just before firing, with 25 hitting the target.
The Iraqi government denounced the “blatant attack” on their joint forces, but strongly demanded that the U.S. forces not respond against Kataib Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shi’a militia which works within the Iraqi military network, as they did after the previous attack last week. “We also refuse that the American forces or others take any action without the approval of the Iraqi government and the commander in chief of the armed forces, as they did on the morning of 3/13/2020,” the government statement said. “In doing so, it does not limit these actions [terrorist attacks], but rather nurtures them, weakens the Iraqi state’s ability to provide its own security, and expects more losses for Iraqis. This necessitates the speedy implementation of the parliament’s decision on the issue of the coalition’s withdrawal.”
Kataib Hezbollah, which the U.S. blames for the attacks, and another group called Harakat al-Nujaba, called for resistance against the U.S. military presence, with KH warning that Iraqi security forces should distance themselves from the U.S. military. An Iraqi official said “the only solution for the U.S. is to implement the parliament decision and leave” because militias were likely to attack again, triggering additional American responses. “If the U.S. leaves, then Iraq will be able to deal with these groups, but with this situation, it’s chaos and undermines the state,” the official said.
Another OPCW Whistleblower Denounces Treatment and Lies About Other Whistleblowers
March 15 (EIRNS)—Max Blumenthal’s The Grayzone news website reported on March 12 that another whistleblower from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has come forward, though they remain unidentified, to back the contentions of the original whistleblowers, that the original scientific work on the investigation of the alleged April 7, 2018 Douma chemical attack was suppressed and replaced by a politically determined conclusion in the OPCW final report on that attack. The Douma attack was blamed on the Syrian government, and on April 13, 2018, Britain, the U.S. and France launched a bombing raid to punish Damascus.
In a statement provided to Grayzone, the new OPCW whistleblower described being “horrified” by the “abhorrent mistreatment” of the inspectors by the agency. The new whistleblower also warned of a climate of intimidation designed to keep other staffers “frightened into silence.”
The statement by the new OPCW whistleblower forcefully defends the inspectors and denounces the campaign by organization leadership to destroy their reputations. “The mistreatment of two highly regarded and accomplished professionals can only be described as abhorrent,” the OPCW official wrote. “I fully support their endeavors, in that it is for the greater good and not for personal gain or in the name of any political agenda. They are in fact trying to protect the integrity of the organization which has been hijacked and brought into shameful disrepute.”
The new OPCW whistleblower stood by the inspectors. “It is quite unbelievable that valid scientific concerns are being brazenly ignored in favor of a predetermined narrative,” the individual wrote. “The lack of transparency in an investigative process with such enormous ramifications is frightful.” The official went on to suggest that fear of retaliation is preventing more OPCW officials from coming forward. “I am one of many who were stunned and frightened into silence by the reality how the organization operates,” the official wrote. “The threat of personal harm is not an illusion, or else many others would have spoken out by now.”
Defender-Europe Exercise Still On Despite Coronavirus
March 14 (EIRNS)—NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) issued a statement yesterday assuring the world that the Defender-Europe 2020 exercise is still on despite the coronavirus outbreak. “In the light of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, modifications have been decided and will reduce the number of participants from the United States in Defender-Europe 20,” SHAPE said in its statement. “This may cause an impact on NATO allies attending the exercise as well. The entire maneuver does not face cancellation.”
In her March 11 weekly strategic webcast, Helga Zepp-LaRouche called for the “entire maneuver” to be cancelled (see below). However, the Italian government announced on March 13 that Italy was pulling out of the exercises altogether.
While neither NATO nor U.S. Army Europe have yet been forthcoming about the “modifications” to the exercise, the news out of Iowa is that 1,600 members of the Iowa National Guard will not now be participating because of the travel restrictions put in place by the Defense Department.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche Argues for Canceling NATO’s ‘Defender-Europe 2020’ Military Exercise
March 15 (EIRNS)—“We need to stop the present NATO maneuvers in Eastern Europe, the Defender-Europe 2020 military exercise involving close to 40,000 troops,” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated March 11 in her weekly international webcast. “Obviously, the virus will not stop in front of the military. And to have these kinds of things going on, when you have an immediate health threat to the population, is really something which doesn’t make any sense. So this NATO maneuver should stop.”
Instead of such provocative and reckless geopolitical actions, Zepp-LaRouche stated, “we should go in the direction of mobilizing for a summit of the Four Powers that Lyndon LaRouche specified,” to address the existential crises facing the planet. “Sometimes, when you are in a real crisis, only if you reach a completely new level of thinking, namely the idea that all the major countries of the world—the United States, Russia, China, and India, as a minimum; and then other countries can come together with these countries—only if you change the level of thinking, and the level of approach, can you find a solution.”
“You cannot just keep going with the policies which have proven to be a failure; that has to absolutely stop. I don’t see a sign that the European establishment is capable of doing it at this point. That just means we need a mobilization of the population, because this is becoming a serious existential crisis for all of us, and we have to take responsibility to bring a new paradigm into existence—a paradigm of cooperation, and then we can solve most problems. At least over time, we can find solutions to such problems as the coronavirus. We need to change the view of the Establishment layers in Europe and the United States towards China and Russia, and this whole idea that regime-change is allowed under the pretext of spreading ‘democracy and human rights,’ is one of these imperial, colonialist ideas which have to go.”
Zepp-LaRouche concluded: “We need completely new thinking: We are in a Dark Age, the Dark Age is absolutely comparable to the 14th century when the Black Death killed one-third of the European population, and people just went crazy! You see signs of similar insanity, already now, and we need therefore, a completely different approach, as happened in the 15th century and the Golden Renaissance in Italy. People must recognize that we are in a Dark Age, and we have to reject all the assumptions which have led to this present situation.”
ECONOMY
Fed Walks Off the Plank
March 15 (EIRNS)—The Federal Reserve System, on Sunday afternoon took the plunge into hyperinflationary hysteria, dropping the interest rate to zero and launching $700 billion in QE in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities – with more to come. In addition, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed has slashed the rate of emergency lending at the discount window for banks by 125 basis points to 0.25%, and lengthened the term of loans to 90 days.
But there is more. According to CNBC: “The Fed also cut reserve requirements for thousands of banks to zero. In addition, in a global coordinated move by central banks, the Fed said the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank took action to enhance dollar liquidity around the world through existing dollar swap arrangements. The banks lowered the rate on these swap line loans and extended the period for such loans.”
It would appear that the “plunge protection committee,” which was likely meeting in emergency session all weekend, came up with nothing to stop the plunge. Rather than taking the only steps that would solve the problem—Glass-Steagall and the full LaRouche Four Laws approach—Powell decided to unleash helicopter money. CNBC again: “The Fed added in its statement that it is prepared to use its full range of tools to support the flow of credit to households and businesses and thereby promote its maximum employment and price stability goals.”
The QE will begin with $40 billion Monday morning, and overall will buy $500 billion of Treasuries and $200 billion of mortgage-backed securities.
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